Live Play Data

Festering Thicket

Land — Swamp Forest · Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

594

Decks Running

286

Median Cast Turn

4.0

Drawn → Played

80%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Festering Thicket is in 8% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live. When drawn, 80% of copies reach play, with a median first-cast turn of 4.0.

Festering Thicket shows up in 8% of Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live, spread across 286 of the 3542 distinct decks that have sat down for a tracked game. That puts it in a narrow slice of Golgari and Jund builds willing to pay the enters-tapped cost in exchange for a safety valve.

The cycling clause is the core pitch. A dual land that can convert into a fresh card late in the game is worth something in a format where mana flood is a real failure mode. 80% of drawn copies reach the battlefield, and the median first-cast turn sits at 4.0. The 60% same-turn cast rate tells you that when players do have it in hand, they move on it quickly rather than holding it.

Festering Thicket is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, Duel Commander, and Oathbreaker. It is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, or Standard. Its home is squarely in singleton formats where a flexible dual that cycles beats a strict basic in the late game.

At a glance

8% of tracked Commander decks include Festering Thicket
80% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends
T4.0 median first-cast turn
60% of drawn-and-cast copies are played the same turn they are drawn
82% battlefield stickiness once it resolves
248 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=138

20%

13%

11%

10%

33%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4.0 P25 2 · P75 7 · max 18

Cast same turn as drawn 60%

The "good card" funnel

594 brought · 248 players

Brought to game

594

Ever drawn

173

Reached battlefield

138

Still on board at game end

113

80%

Of 594 Festering Thickets brought to games, 173 were drawn, 138 of those were cast, and most copies that resolved stayed on the battlefield through the end of the game.

≥ -1.2pp

Players who cast this card win 28% of the time (n=128) , vs 21% when it never left the library (n=355).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 23% (n=32) — about the same as leaving it in the library. Those players survived long enough to draw it, so the gap above is about the card resolving, not just about surviving.

Observed gap +6.8pp; 95% confidence interval -1.2pp to +14.8pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

185 instances

0.5%

Library

61.1%

Battlefield

23.2%

Graveyard

4.3%

Exile

Most copies finish on the battlefield or graveyard, a split that reflects the card's dual identity: sometimes a land that sticks, sometimes a cycling discard that goes straight to the yard.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

Dina, Essence Brewer dominates the top-commanders chart by raw deck count, with Hearthhull and Auntie Ool close behind. Virtually every commander on the list shares Black and Green, the two colors this land taps for.

Card text

Festering Thicket

Land — Swamp Forest

(

: Add

.) This land enters tapped. Cycling {2}

(

, Discard this card: Draw a card.)

Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC) · Rare · Illustrated by Jakob Eirich

Frequently Asked

How often is Festering Thicket drawn in a Commander game?

Across 574 tracked multiplayer Commander games where the card was in the deck, Festering Thicket was drawn 29% of the time. That is consistent with what you expect from a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 173 instances that reached a hand, 80% went on to be cast before the game ended. The rest were either cycled away or the game concluded first.

Does playing Festering Thicket correlate with winning?

In 128 participations where Festering Thicket was cast, the normalized win rate was 28%. In 355 participations where it stayed in the library, the win rate was 21%. The +6.8 percentage-point gap is a directional signal, not a definitive one. The confidence interval crosses zero on this sample, so treat it as early signal rather than settled fact.

What turn does Festering Thicket usually hit the battlefield?

The median first-cast turn is 4.0. The distribution is bimodal: a cluster of early casts from opening-hand draws landing on turns 1 and 2, and a second wave spread across turns 5 through 8 when players draw it mid-game and drop it as their land for the turn. The cycling option means some copies never hit the battlefield at all, instead trading for a fresh draw.

Which commanders run Festering Thicket most often?

Dina, Essence Brewer leads the top-commanders list by a wide margin, reflecting how naturally a cycling Swamp-Forest fits into Golgari-based life-gain and drain strategies. Hearthhull, the Worldseed and Auntie Ool, Cursewretch, both Jund commanders whose color identity includes Black and Green, round out the top three. The spread across both two-color and three-color commanders shows the card earns its slot whenever Black and Green are both in the command zone.

Is Festering Thicket banned anywhere?

No. Festering Thicket is legal in Commander, Duel Commander, Oathbreaker, Legacy, and Vintage. It is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, Pauper, or Brawl. Its cycling cost of 2 generic mana is straightforward to pay, so there is no restriction on how the ability is used in any format where the card is legal.

How concentrated is the Festering Thicket data across players?

248 distinct players have brought Festering Thicket to a tracked game on Playgroup Live. The single heaviest contributor accounts for 5% of all instances, which is well below the threshold that would suggest the data is skewed by one prolific pilot. That spread is a meaningful strength of this dataset for a niche dual land.